The J. Paul Getty Center houses one of the world’s foremost art
organizations on a 110-acre hilltop site surrounded by 600 acres of land
preserved in its natural state in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Accommodating about 1.4 million yearly visitors and nearly 1,500 staff
members engaged in activities that range from scholarly research to public
programs, the Getty Center has layered a complex organization that responds
beautifully to its hilltop site and the need to serve both public and
private realms. From the outset of planting, the gardens and outdoor spaces
were conceived as integral to the overall character of the Getty Center,
and key to serving the Trust’s goal of creating a worthy addition
to the City’s cultural destinations and creating a legacy to future
generations that recognizes that mature landscapes are among civilization’s
most evolved and complex artifacts. This pursuit of excellence resulted
in a landscape that sustains environmental quality and cherishes its patrimony;
that combines utility with pleasure, horticulture and aesthetics, artifice
and nature, public and private space in a manner that is both unique and
expressive of its time and place. Within this context, landscape concepts
and planting strategies also had to be conceived to solve a host of site
development issues that range from installing planting and water features
over structures housing priceless artwork and manuscripts, to re-vegetating
land affected by development of the site.

The landscape, fountains and gardens of the Getty Center are varied and
complex, referring to both the natural context of southern California,
and the cultural legacy of a new world institution with its roots in the
old world. Italian Renaissance hillside villas provided a model for the
architecture meeting terrain with stepped terraces, gardens and courtyards,
while landscapes inspired by the larger Mediterranean context of Spain,
France and Italy embrace the natural context of California characterized
by original and inventive use of a wide range of plants, horticultural
techniques and the need to prevent erosion and wild fires. Throughout
the sensory journey, the gardens and fountains develop a sequence of rhythm
and color and sound, texture, light and shade, fragrance, and form that
compliment the architecture, orient the visitor and tell many stories.
As one moves higher within the complex, the temperature and color of plants
increases in relationship to the degree of exposure to the sun, while
a single plant can condense a world of meaning such as in the Scholars
Garden where soothing shade is provided by Olive trees, the symbols of
Athena, goddess of wisdom. At the same, time, the gardens also extend
the Getty’s mission of stewardship to the environment as only plants
were selected that can thrive in the southern California climate without
extraordinary measure for life support in order to meet a water conservation
strategy. The fountains, like the gardens also reinterpret traditions
of garden art through a regional lens, such as the Amphora Fountain, carved
into travertine walls, which uses ancient form to create a modern grotto.
While at the center of the Museum courtyard, an exuberant fountain and
its more subdued counterpart in an adjacent courtyard, embody the history
of California with spectacular marble boulders from the Sierra Nevada.

Click photo for larger image.

The Cactus Garden – South Promontory (Photo by: Tim Rue, TRUE Photo)

The Museum Courtyard Fountain (Photo by: Olin Partnership, Ltd.)

Agaves, Euphorbias and other desert plants on the south terraces (Photo
by: Olin Partnership, Ltd.)

The occulus of the Amphora Fountain. The water source is a runnel in the
terrace, above (Photo by: Olin Partnership, Ltd.)

Fountain at the entrance plaza. The pool is fed by a gentle cascade that
runs down steps alongside the grand stairway leading to the Museum (Photo
by: Dominique Vorillion, copyright The J. Paul Getty Trust).